[LINK] Green light for internet filter plans

[rene]

On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:11:10 +0100, Kim Holburn wrote:
> Whatever they do in the event this passes both houses (it's not going
> to be just done via regulation without a parliamentary bill is it?)

Apparently not, unless the govt changes its mind or something yet again. 
Conroy's media release yesterday said:
"The Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting 
Services Act to require all ISPs to block RC-rated material hosted on 
overseas servers."
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/115

> is not clear yet but in the Enex report it says:
>
>> Pass-by filters
>>
>> A pass-by filter does not require all traffic to pass through the
>> filter. Pass-by filters
>> comprise two types: hybrid and port mirroring. Only hybrid pass-by
>> technology was used in this trial.
>>
>
> ...  blah blah blah ...
>
>> Most commonly the action by a filter is a
>> block-page being returned to the end-user, otherwise the traffic is
>> allowed to pass on and the site returned to the user.

Yes, that is the case if an ISP chooses to buy, implement, and pay annual 
licence fees to use a filter product, because probably all commercial 
filter products do return a "blocked by this filter product" page.

However, it is highly questionable whether large and medium sized ISPs 
would end up choosing to pay for commercial products, not only because of 
the cost, but because of the limitations of such products. For example, the 
Marshal8e6 product says that one of its censorware boxes will (allegedly) 
handle 30,000 end users. Imagine how many of those boxes Telstra, for 
example, would have to install, and what they might have to do to their 
network infrastructure to establish enough points at which to install the 
(many) censorware boxes necessary and/or implement load balancing and so 
on. Imo, that is very likely why Telstra invented a purpose built system 
using DNS plus Squid proxy for their trial. It also seems very likely why 
UK BT and the majority of other ISPs in the UK that have implemented 
blocking (of only 'cp' material) are using purpose built systems designed 
around IP address lookup + proxy. In some other EU countries (e.g. Norway), 
the ISPs that are blocking are using plain DNS poisoning, i.e. blocking 
whole domains (not URLs) by DNS.

It should be noted that all of the 9 ISPs in the Enex trial were only 
blocking access for customers who *opted-in* to the trial, and that most of 
the ISPs were very small - having only hundreds or a few thousand customers 
in total, not all of whom opted in. One ISP said 15 customers opted-in. The 
only large ISP was Optus and they said they were only inviting opt-in from  
customers in a specific regional area.

Irene